The hidden risks every startup doesn’t know about

In the past few weeks, I’ve talked to dozens of startup founders about who has access to their documents.

The biggest thing I’ve learned?

People don’t know what kinds of document access risks their companies are exposed to. But once they hear about the risks, they immediately get worried.

“If I had the ability to clearly answer who has access to documents, that would help me sleep at night.”

Startups have the perfect storm of access risks going on. Loads of personal accounts being used, vendors and contractors collaborating with the company, and no IT team to help them wrangle the mess.

What exactly is at stake? Much more than most folks on the team can imagine.

Personal account access

The average startup has between dozens to hundreds of personal accounts with access to their company documents.

In fact, over half of the people we surveyed say that they’ve added their own or a coworker’s personal email account to company documents.

If an employee leaves but still has access to documents on their personal account(s), you’ve left a backdoor open for people to continue to see your company’s confidential information. That employee was never truly offboarded, with all the risk that goes with it.

On top of that, people accidentally create company documents from their personal accounts all the time. Do these accounts have two-factor authentication (2FA) protection turned on? You can’t be sure. And since the company doesn’t own the documents the personal account created, they could get accessed, copied or deleted at any time.

Over half of the people surveyed have accidentally created work documents using their personal email account. So the problem of personal accounts creating documents is real, and big.

Vendor and third party access

Many startups have a revolving door of contractors and vendors working with them. These folks are given access to company information. They’re also creating loads of information themselves.

But what happens when they stop working with your company?

If you do nothing, then these third parties can access your company information anytime they want to, as often as they want to. IP, company strategy, and your company’s secret sauce are at risk.

Only 40% of people surveyed claim they always remove a vendor’s access to documents when they are done working with them. That means most of the time, external parties your company has worked with can keep accessing your information in perpetuity.

Employees taking documents

You’re pouring so much energy into your business in the beginning. It’s that critical make or break time when you’re rushing to get to product/market fit and then to move faster than any other competitor.

But there’s a common trend that could cause you to lose that ground you worked so hard for.

When people leave companies, many take information with them.

45% of people we surveyed admitted to taking documents when exiting a company. Another 9% would rather not answer.

Most companies make it easy for people to take documents. They allow confidential documents to have public links, they don’t monitor or remove personal accounts, and they let third party access persist.

These are the hidden risks that a company - no matter the size - has. And these risks aren’t in plain sight. What we’ve built at Nira helps bring these risks to light and puts an end to the lack of visibility and control.

The Nira team and I are working hard to make sure our product can be used by both startups and the largest organizations on the planet too.

I’d love to hear from you about this topic. Have you ever been worried about who has access to company information? Please hit reply and let me know your thoughts.

Hiten

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